Word: crudely
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...embarrassment. The New Year's debacle capped what has been a dismal few months for the radical, anti-U.S. leader, who controls the hemisphere's largest oil reserves. He started the year seemingly at the height of power, taking office after a landslide reelection and with crude prices breaking records by the day. But in November, during one of Chavez's rants at a summit in Chile, the King of Spain publicly told him to "shut up." That rebuke was followed this month by another from Venezuelans, who in a constitutional referendum voted down his bid to deepen...
Chávez insisted in a TIME interview last year that "capitalism is the way of the devil." But while Chávez, who controls the hemisphere's largest crude reserves, has used his awesome oil windfalls to reduce poverty, Venezuelans now suggest they want to increase capitalist investment, satanic as it may be, to solve their nagging unemployment. They appreciate his shrewd efforts to raise oil prices, but they'd also like him to lower inflation, Latin America's highest. And while they admire him for enfranchising the majority poor, they'd applaud as loudly if he did something to reduce...
...question is, Does he really want to? Last year the government announced a $280 million plan to upgrade Paraguaná and increase its capacity to process Venezuela's abundant heavy crude from 50,000 bbl. to 130,000 bbl. per day. But workers say they have yet to see the project move ahead, and some complain the refineries are underperforming. "It's precarious," says a veteran supervisor. "The plant isn't living up to its original design because [PDVSA doesn't] want to cover the costs...
...experts say Venezuelan production is slipping and Chávez's industry policy for the long term is risky. Venezuela, like Mexico and Iran, needs reinvestment and foreign investment to keep its $100 billion industry in prime condition. But with China's and India's demand for crude inspiring projections for exponential growth and the U.S.'s determination to remain a slave to oil, the oil industry may well have hit a point when the short term is the long term--every barrel not pumped today will be worth more tomorrow. "The Venezuelans are investing as much as they want...
...sitting atop one of the world's largest oil deposits--Chávez claims there are more than 200 billion bbl. in the Orinoco Belt, which, if true, is nearly 10 times as many proven reserves as the U.S. has. But most of the stuff is extra-heavy crude. Tapping and processing that tarlike oil require billions in investment. Analysts say PDVSA has been slow to start those projects, including joint stakes with China's CNPC, Brazil's Petrobras and Iran's Petropars in southeastern Venezuela...